^_J|||ili|iiHI|MM 

I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 



^0 



m 
m 



\\mEl) STATES OF A3IEU1CA. M 



THE 



PREDICTED DOWNFALL 

OF 

THE TURKISH POWER 

THE 

PREPARATION FOR THE RETURN 
OE THE TEN TRIBES. 

BY 

G. S. EABER, B.D, 

MASTER OF SHERBUBN HOSPITAL AND PREBENDAKY OF SALISBURY. 



GEdip. Tyran. 110, 111, 



LONDON : 

THOMAS BOSWORTH, 215 EEOENT STEEET. 

MDCCCLIII. 




LONDON : 

Printed by G. Barclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



PREFACE. 



The utility of a Preface very mucli consists in 
briefly giving a clear idea of tlie subject about 
to be discussed^ and in thus preventing any 
misapprehension . 

Under such an aspect^ a Preface may not seem 
quite out of place^ even as respects so small a 
Production as the present. 

I. With our best commentators^ I consider 
the Downfall of the Ottoman Power to be clearly 
predicted in Scripture. Hence^ whenever the 
destined time shall arrive^ all the complications 
of modern political diplomacy will be found to- 
tally unable to prevent the Ruin of that once 
formidable Empire. 

But^ though its downfall is thus, I think, 



Vi PREFACE. 

absolutely certain^ we have no warrant for spe- 
cifying any precise year. 

In general^ we know from Prophecy^ that 
its Dissolution must occur before the Close of 
the 1260 years and before the Commencement 
of the Time of the End. 

This knowledge^ in the abstract, we possess : 
and we should also possess it in the concrete^ if 
we knew with certainty the exact time when the 
1260 years will expire. 

There is great reason to believe^ that they will 
expire in the year 1864. 

Whence^ if this opinion be correct^ the Otto- 
man Power must fall some time before the arrival 
of that year. But we cannot be absolutely cer- 
tain that it is correct. 

Thisy indeed^ we know^ that that grand period 
cannot as yet have elapsed^ because Daniel teaches 
us^ that its Close will be marked by the com- 
mencing restoration of his People*. And we 

^ Dan. xii. 1, 6, 7. 



PREFACE. 



vii 



farther know^ from other prophecies^ that his 
People comprehends both the IsraeUtes of the 
Ten Tribes and the proper Jews of the Two 
Tribes : because they are described^ as being con- 
verted and restored simultaneously and unitedly ; 
so that^ in future, they shall constitute^ as of 
oldy a single people*. 

Now it is quite clear^ that this has not yet 
been accomplished. 

Therefore it plainly follows^ that the 1260 
years have not yet expired. 

II. The Downfall of the Ottoman Power^ let 
it occur when it may, is a matter of vast scrip- 
tural importance. 

It will prepare the way for the Return of the 
Ten Tribes : and their Return will synchronise 
with the Return of the Two Tribes. 

We have no right, however, to conclude, that 
the Restoration of Israel will immediately follow 
the Downfall of Turkey. A way will be prepared 
by the removal of an obstacle : but it does not 
* Ezek. xxxvii. 11-28. 



viii PREFACE. 

therefore follow^ that Israel will instantaneously 
avail itself of the preparation. 

How long a time will intervene between the 
two events, we are not enabled to determine. 
This only we know^ that the Downfall of Turkey 
will occur at the Pouring out of the Sixth Apo- 
calyptic Vial, but that the Restoration of Israel 
will not take place until the Pouring out of the 
Seventh Vial. 

Here, again, we may be certain in the abstract, 
without being certain in the concrete, 

III. The Subversion of the Turkish Power 
will evidently occasion, as all seem to anticipate, 
a fearful general war. 

This war will, I believe, be the last under the 
present order of things. It will commence, in- 
deed, in Europe : but, at the close of the 1260 
years, or at the Pouring out of the Seventh Vial, 
or at the Commencement of the Time of the 
End (for these several matters are syn chronical), 
it will pass into Palestine. 

IV. Of the progress of the Wilful Roman 



PREFACE. ix 

King associated with his ally the False Roman 
Prophet^ a wonderfully minute account is given 
by Daniel. 

He will be opposed^ it seems, by the two 
Powers^ which at that time will be the lords 
respectively of Egypt and of Syria : whence those 
two Powers are called the King of the South 
and the King of the North. But the event only 
can determine with certainty what those two 
Powers will be. 

They will^ however, according to Daniel, be 
unable to prevent the progress of the Wilful 
King, when he invades the glorious land : but, 
notwithstanding this inability, Edom and Moab 
and the chief of the children of Ammon, what- 
ever may be the States designated by those 
ancient names, will escape out of his hand. 
Nevertheless, Egypt will not thus escape : and 
while he has power over its treasures, the Li- 
byans and the African Cuthim will be at his 
steps. Yet, when disturbed by tidings out of 



X PREFACE. 

the East and out of the Norths he shall plant 
the tabernacles of his palaces^ between the seas, 
in the glorious holy mountain, he will, in exact 
conformity with other parallel prophecies which 
^ treat of the same time and the same subject, 
come to his end, none being able to help him*. 

V. When, at the Pouring out of the Sixth 
Vial, Turkey shall have fallen, the Kings of the 
whole Uoman World, we are told, will be ga- 
thered to the war of that great Day of God 
Almighty. 

Thus, plainly, the Downfall of Turkey will 
be, at once, both the signal and the cause of 
this terrible war. 

The Confederation will be formed by the joint 
intrigues of what are called Three Unclean. Spi- 
rits : and, by noting the sources wdience they 
had proceeded, we may form no unreasonable 
conjecture as to their character. Be they what 

* Dan. xi. 40-45. Compare Isaiah, si. 10-16 ; lix. 16-21 ; 
Ixvi. 5-24 ; Joel, ii. ; Zechar. xii-xiv. ; Rev. xix. 11-21. 



PREFACE. 



XI 



they may^ they are spirits of evil. Whence we 
may be sure, that the gathering of the Roman 
Kings infers no good purpose. 

A general war may clearly., I think, be set 
down as the consequence of the Downfall of 
Turkey : and, in the course of its evolutions, 
Israel will be restored. 

As to particulars, we must not venture further 
than Scripture doth, as it were, take us by the 
hand. Of this, however, we may be sure, that 
THE Downfall of Tuekey will be the har- 
binger OF THE Restoration of Israel. 

Sherhurn House, 
June 14, 1858. 



THE 

DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

AND THE 

EETURN OF THE TEN TEIBES. 



Events are now succeeding eacli other with an 
almost portentous rapidity : and,, in point of Pro- 
phetic Chronology, we are also concurrently ap- 
proaching to the Fated time of the End, or the 
Close of the Latter Three Times and a Half. 

This may be safely said in the abstract. But, 
furthermore, connecting Prophetic Chronology 
with Secular Chronology, we may additionally 
say, in the concrete, that there is very great rea- 
son to believe, that the Three Times and a Half 
will expire, and that the brief intermediate period 
denominated The Time of the End and synchro- 
nising with the Seventh Apocalyptic Vial will 
commence, in the year 1864. 

The last adjustment cannot be propounded as 
an absolute certainty : but, so far as I can judge, 
it contains the highest amount of probability. 
The question, however, is so fully discussed in 



14 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



my Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, that I would 
refer the inquirer to that Work^ rather than in- 
troduce superfluous repetition into the present 
brief Discussion. Suffice it to say^ that^ although 
I have tested that and various other points with 
as much unsparing severity as I can command^ I 
have seen no reason to retract any essential posi- 
tion maintained in my Sacred Calendar, 

I. The revival of the short-lived and sword- 
slain Seventh Head of the Roman Empire^ or^ in 
other words^ the Revival of the Emperorship of 
the French^ the duration of which^ ere it was cut 
down by the sword of foreign war^ was so short , 
that the governing dynasty consisted at the most 
of only two individuals^ is the last solemn warning 
that has been struck upon the bell of Prophecy : 
a warnings the more impressively solemn^ because 
we are definitely taught^ that^ under the now 
revived Seventh Polity^ the guilty apostate Em- 
pire is doomed^ at the Close of the Three Times 
and a Half, or the Twelve Hundred and Sixty 
years^ to go into utter destruction^. 

I mean not rashly to affirm, that its destruction 
will occur under the presejit Individual Repre- 
sentative of the revived Seventh Polity. Such 
* Rev. xvii. 8, 11. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 15 

may^ or may not be^ tlie case. But^ on this point, 
there is no anterior certainty. With very few 
exceptions, Prophecy treats of Dynasties and 
Empires, not of mere Individuals who may suc- 
cessively represent such Dynasties or successively 
administer such Empires : and the acts of the 
governing Individuals are thence considered, not 
as their own personal acts, but as the acts of the 
Empire or Dynasty. On this well-ascertained 
principle, the Roman Empire, for anything .that 
v/e know to the contrary, may be destined to go 
into destruction as an Empire under a totally 
different Individual from its present Chief. 

But, that we are now in the last stage of the 
Empire's progress, cannot, I think, admit of a 
doubt : because it is now under its predicted 
Seventh and Last Head, which proves itself to be 
such by its exact accomplishment of what has 
been foretold respecting it ; and likewise because, 
under that very Head in its revived state, it is 
doomed to perish, not alone, but along with the 
False Ecclesiastical Prophet*. 

II. Of late, various attempts have been made 
to identify the Seventh Head with this Power or 
with that Power : and their several authors, 
* Rev. xix. 20. 



16 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



without (so far as I can perceive) bringing their 
Schemes to the test of a close examination^ claim, 
with a premature positiveness, to have each fully- 
established the truth*. 

But^ when the test is applied^ they invariably 
break down in some necessary point or other. 

1. Thus the Seventh Head has been confidently 
pronounced to be the Emperorship of Dioclesian 
and his colleagues^ for no better reason^ than be- 
cause in some internal political arrangements it 
diflered from the Ptoman Emperorship of xlugus- 
tus : a project about as reasonable^ as to pro- 
nounce the English Monarchy of William III. an 
entirely new Kingship altogether distinct from 
the English Monarcliy of the Stuarts or the 
Tudor s, or the Plantagenets. 

But mark how it fails, when submitted to the 
test. 

After this mere internal modification of the 
Roman Basilei's or Emperorship had been suc- 
ceeded by the sole domination of Constantine, it 
was never revived. For most idle and quite un- 
satisfactory it is to say, that the Dioclesianic Em- 
perorship was revived in the Papacy ; a Power, 

* One of these g-entlemen literally concludes with, Quod 
erat demonstrandum ! 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 1 7 



both nominally and circumstantially, different in 
every respect. 

3. Thus, again, the prophetically declared short- 
lived Seventh Head, has been actually and gravely 
pronounced to be the long -continuing Carlovingian 
Roman-Emperorship. 

But a Polity, which, either in France or in 
Germany, subsisted more than a thousand years, 
cannot well be said to have continued a short space : 
and, furthermore, when it fell in the year 1806, 
it was not, as the prophecy requires, slain by the 
sword of war, but simply ceased to exist by a 
formal abdication. 

3. Yet, again, the Seventh Head has been, 
with pre-eminent confidence, recently declared to 
be the Line of the Western Roman Emperors 
from Honorius to the temporary extinction of the 
Latin Empire : while its revival is found in the 
inauguration of the Carlovingian Empire. 

But this ill- digested Scheme fails in every par- 
ticular. 

It evinces a total ignorance of the very Prin- 
ciple of Roman Law, which, as appearing again 
and again in the records of History, and as fully 
established (if it needed any such additional 
establishment) by the Institutes of Justinian, 

B 



18 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POTTER^ 



always deemed the Roman Emperorship an unit 
by whatever number of Individuals it might be 
administered. Hence^ instead of viewing the 
Western Emperorship of Honorius (by Mr. Mede 
denominated the Bemi-CcEsar) as a distinct Head 
or Polity, the Principle of Roman Law identified 
it both with the Augustan Emperorship and with 
the Constantinian Emperorship and with the 
Carlo vingian Emperorship. 

Furthermore, it stands confuted by naked matter 
of fact, as compared with the requisitions of Pro- 
phecy. 

The Roman Empire, after all its various changes, 
during which, in the eye of Prophecy, it never 
loses its identity, is finally to go into destruction 
under its revived Seventh Head: and that, so 
terribly, and so perfectly, as to leave not a vestige 
of its multiplied polities behind. With its de- 
struction, is to be associated that of the False 
Prophet : and the destined theatre of these great 
events is, again and again, marked out to be Pa- 
lestine j while the immediate neighbourhood of 
Jerusalem and the Dead Sea is yet more definitely 
specified. 

Now, we may confidently appeal to History, 
whether, as the present Scheme plainly requires, 



AND RETURN OE THE TEN TRIBES. 



19 



any such facts marked the extinction of the Carlo- 
vingian-Roman Emperorship in the year 1806. 

III. Directly opposed to these and the like 
untenable schemes^ the view^ which^ by the mere 
compulsion of stubborn facts^ I was led to adopt 
considerably more than thirty years ago (it was 
propounded in the year 1818)^ and which has 
since^ by an additional palmary fact^ received a 
full establishment^ shrinks not^ so far as I have 
been able to discover^ from any severity of sifting : 
w^hile^ in corroboration of the evidence afforded by 
facts^ it stands out imperiously required by the 
known Principle of Roman Law. 

1. According to the force of that Law (which, 
in the Institutes of Justinian, is taken for granted, 
as if any formal proof of so well-known a matter 
w^ere plainly a work of supererogation), the Em- 
perorship of the Romans did not ultimately fall 
until the year 1806. 

But, during the course of its long subsistence, 
no Seventh Head could spring up : for, in that case, 
wx should have the anomaly of two distinct and 
different Supreme Heads reigning simultaneously 
and conjointly. 

Yet the predicted and fully- described Seventh 
Head, be it w^hat Power it might, must spring up 



20 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



very shortly before the fall of its predecessor : for^ 
if it sprang up indefinitely after the fall^ the 
Empire^ during the interval between the fall of 
one Head and the rise of another^ would for a 
season be left without a Head*. 

3. The event exactly confirmed the necessary 
anticipation. 

Until the year 1806^ the Roman Emperorship 
did not fall. Therefore the Seventh Head cannot 
have appeared in the course of some distant age 
remotely before that year : but it must have ap- 
peared so shortly before it, as to be ready to take 
the place of the now sickening Roman Emperor- 

* The prophecy recognises no such interval between Head 
and Head, as that one Head should have completely fallen 
before another was ready to take its place. Abeyances there 
were : but an abeyance is the very reverse of an extinction. 
When the Seventh Head is mortally wounded by the sword, 
all its predecessors having already fallen, the Empire, having 
now no living Head, is left in a state of political death or non- 
existence as an Empu'e. But the deadly wound is healed : 
and, by the revival of the sword-slain Seventh Head, not by 
the rise of any new Eighth Head, the defunct Empire is re- 
vived also. Now, in the whole course of the Roman Empire, 
under all its Seven Heads, there is no interval without a living 
Head, save that which occurs between the slaying and the re- 
vival of the same single Seventh Head. The whole of this 
political machinery is, in fact, borrowed from the fabled hydra 
of animal life. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 21 

ship as soon as ever its increasing debility should 
terminate in its political death. 

Such, accordingly, was the event. 

The Roman Emperorship, gradually sickening 
and pining away by the secession or abstraction of 
its Feudatories, fell in the year 1806. But the 
destined short-lived and sword-slain and now at 
length revived Seventh Head had sprung up in 
the year 1804 : and was thus ready to take the 
place of the old Roman Emperorship and to per- 
form its destined part in the great political drama. 

IV. The series of the apocalyptic Vials, as con- 
nected with the Emperorship of the French^ leaves 
no doubt, that the Fifth Vial has been poured out. 

Hence, in the course of regular succession, the 
Effusion of the Sixth Vial may next in order be 
expected. 

1. We have recently heard a warning stroke 
upon the prophetic bell : we may expect, therefore, 
from the disposition of the apocalyptic series, 
shortly to hear another. 

I say shortly : because, on the Principle of Syn- 
chronisation which (as Mede vv^ell shows) is the 
very life-blood of apocalyptic interpretation, the 
Seventh Vial brings us to the close of the 1260 
years. 



22 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 

Now^ as I have already stated^ there is much 
reason to believe that that famous period will ex- 
pire in the year 1864. 

Hence^ if the Seventh Vial begins to flow in the 
year 1864^ we may now^ in the year 1853^ be 
morally sure^ that the Effusion of the Sixth Vial 
must needs occur shortly. 

2. I once thought^ that the Sixth Vial marked 
a Gradual Drying up of the mystic Euphrates : 
and^ thence^ as I could not but see the Gradual 
Declension of the Ottoman Power^ I supposed it 
to be even now flowing. 

But, in such an opinion_, I was certainly mis- 
taken. 

The real question is : whether, in apocalyptic 
chronology, the Effusion of the Sixth Vial marks 
the Commencement, or the Completion, of the Dry- 
ing up of the mystic Euphrates. 

3. By the almost unanimous consent of com- 
mentators^ the effect of the Sixth Trumpet^ by 
loosing the Four Angels or Ottomanic Sultanies 

I bound for a season in the region of the great river 
Euphrates^ indicates the Rise of the Ottoman 
Power. 

Hence^ correspondingly and homogeneously^ 
we may conclude^ that the Drying up of that / 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



23 



same river indicates the Downfall of tliat same 
Empire. 

4. The principle of this harmonious interpreta- 
tion of the Sixth Trumpet and the Sixth Vial is 
that of well-ascertained symbolisation. 

A river^ mentioned generally and without any 
particular local restriction, denotes a regularly poli- 
tied nation. 

Hence^ when some particular river is specified 
by name^ the nation^ characterised by that river 
from the circumstance of the river being its chief 
or regal stream, is intended. 

The Euphrates^ therefore, being the principal 
river of Turkey and flowing through the midst 
of it, becomes the appropriate symbol of the 
Turkish Empire. 

5. The same river had already, for the same 
reason, been employed by Isaiah to typify the 
Assyrian Empire. 

Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of 
Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and 
Remaliah^s son : now, therefore, behold, the Lord 
bringeth up upon them the waters of the river strong 
and many, the King of Assyria and all his glory. 
And he shall come up over all his channels, and go 
over all his banks. And he shall pass through 



24 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

Judah : he shall overflow and go over : he shall 
reach even to the neck^. 

Here, the overflowing of the Euphrates, always 
by way of excellence denominated simply the 
River, imports the victorious progress of Assyria 
under her King. 

Conversely, therefore, when the River, still 
the Euphrates, is smitten into seven shallow 
streams so that men may go over it dryshod ; and 
when this is done to make a way for Israel out of 
Assyria, whither he had been led captive: the 
import must be the Dissolution of the Power then 
symbolised by the River. 

The same remark applies to the Tongue of the 
Egyptian Sea or the Delta of the Nile. When 
this is utterly destroyed to open a passage for 
Judah from the West, such a management of the 
symbol will import the Destruction of the then 
Governing Power of Egypt. 

6. With Mr. Mede, I think, that the imagery of 
the Drying up the Euphrates upon the Effusion of 
the Sixth Vial has been borrowed from the Smiting 
of the Euphrates into seven streams in the prophecy 
of Isaiah. 

But I am willing to go yet farther. I not only 

* Isaiah, viii. 6-3. 



AND RETURN OP THE TEN TRIBES. 25 

admit a mutuation of imagery : I likewise incline 
to deem the Smiting of the Euphrates and the 
Drying up of the Euphrates, to bear precisely 
the same meaning, and to be strictly one and the 
same event. 

In each case^ we may observe^ that the 
Euphrates has not a way opened through the 
midst of it^ the waters in their full force standing 
like a wall above and below^ as when Israel passed 
through the western horn of the Eed Sea and 
again through the stream of the river Jordan. 
On the contrary^ the waters are absolutely dried 
up : and thus the great Kiver is made so shallow, 
as to present no obstacle to those who would pass, 
not through it, but over it. 

This is a distinction, which must be carefully 
borne in mind : for the two cases are essentially 
different. 

A way may be miraculously opened through a 
river, by dividing its stream : while the river 
itself is in full force and the very reverse of being 
dried up. 

And a way may be miraculously prepared over 
the bed of a river, by a complete drying up of the 
river itself: while, in that case, there is no 
division of its stream so as to form a passage. 



26 DOWNFALL OP THE OTTOMAN POWEK^ 

The distinction before us is of prime import- 
ance : because^ unless I greatly mistake^ it 
effectually demonstrates^ that the Euphrates, 
when described as either dried up or as smitten 
into shallow runlets, cannot be the literal, but 
must be the symbolical, Euphrates. Of course, I 
deny not the possibility of a miracle which should 
either totally dry up the Euphrates or convert it 
into a number of shallow brooks. Yet, when, on 
the supposition that the literal Euphrates is 
meant, a way might just as effectually be pre- 
pared for the returning Israelites by a division of 
the stream so as to afford a passage between its 
suspended waters : and when we recollect, that 
God never works superfluously : it does not seem 
probable, that the ivhole of such a river should be 
needlessly dried up ; which yet we must believe, if 
we suppose the literal Euphrates to be meant. 

7. In Isaiah, the purpose, for which the 
Euphrates is made shallow and the Delta of the 
Nile destroyed, is to afford a highway, for Israel 
from Assyria, and for Judah from the West 
especially, though without an exclusion of \X\efour 
corners of the earth. 

The indication of this purpose distinctly marks 
the chronology of the prophecy. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



27 



We know from Daniel^ that the dispersion of 
the holy people will be finished^ and that his 
nation will be delivered at the close of the Three 
Times and a Half : and^ from Isaiah^ we learn, 
that the restoration of Israel will synchronise with 
the restoration o| Judah, and will, therefore, occur 
at the close of the same grand period*. Hence 
it follows, that the smiting of the Euphrates into 
seven shallow streams, and the syn chronical de- 
struction of the Tongue or Delta of the Egyptian 
Sea, each occurring to prepare a way for the two 
grand divisions of God^s ancient people, must 
obviously occur some short time before the expir- 
ation of the Three Times and a Halff. 

8. This, at once, brings out another synchronism. 

The apocalyptic Drying up of the Euphrates 
stands precisely in the same chronological position 
as the Smiting of the Euphrates into seven shallow 
streams announced by Isaiah. 

Hence we may be morally certain, that the 
same event, be it literal or be it figurative, is set 
forth in each prophecy alike. 

* Dan. xii. 1, 6, 7; Isaiah, xi. 11-16. 

f Nothing can he more correct than the hestowing upon the 
Nile the name of the Egyptian Sea. It was of old denominated 
Oceames, or the Ocean. 



28 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 



But I should almost venture to say, that the 
very necessity of the case, in each prophecy alike, 
requires us to adopt a figurative interpretation. 

Hence, the Drying up of the Euphrates or the 
Smiting it into seven shallow streams will denote, 
not any such litei^al infliction upon the literal 
river, but the Downfall of the Empire symbolised 
by the river at the period to which the two allied 
prophecies refer : that is to say, it will note the 
Completed Downfall of the Ottoman Emph-e. 

9. This conclusion forthwith determines the 
character of the apocalyptic Kings from the East. 

The Smiting of the Euphrates into seven shallow 
streams prepares a highway for the Ten Tribes of 
Israel out of Assyria, whither their forefathers had 
been deported. 

The Drying up of the Euphrates, similarly and 
at the very same time, prepares the way of the 
Kings from the rising of the sun. 

Therefore, most plainly, the Kings from the 
rising of the sun can be no other than the Ten 
Tribes of Israel. 

10. Furthermore : since the infliction upon 
the Euphrates must thus be interpreted figur- 
atively, as denoting, not any exsiccation of the 
literal river, but the Downfall of the Empire 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



29 



symbolised by it : homogeneity requires, that the 
Destruction of the Delta of the Nile or of the 
Egyptian Sea, which is foretold conjointly in the 
same prophecy, should be similarly interpreted. 

Hence, as the Downfall of the Ottoman Power 
is foretold under the image of the Exsiccation of 
the Euphrates : so the Downfall of the Power 
paramount in Egypt is similarly foretold by the 
Destruction of the Nile. 

In each case, an impediment is to be removed, 
and a way is to be prepared for the return of the 
whole House of Israel, both from the East and 
from the West. 

Isaiah, after mentioning the various regions out 
of which they are to be restored, emphatically 
sums up the whole by the striking declaration : 
The Lord shall set up an ensign foi' the nations, and 
shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather 
together the dispersed of Judah from the four 
corners of the ear th"^ , 

* Isaiah, xi. 12. Perhaps it maybe thought that the last 
clause in the chapter, like as it was to Israel in the day that he 
came up out of the land of Egi/pty would import a literal pas- 
sage through the Euphrates and the Nile : but it respects the 
circumstance, not the mode, of the exodus. This is clear from 
the total difference between the two modes: a difference so 
2^reat as to preclude any just comparison. The Israelites, when 



30 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



11. Thus^ from tlie sufficiently obvious tenor of 
two connected prophecies^ the imagery of the 
later prophecy (as Mede justly observes) being 
borrowed from the imagery of the earlier prophecy^ 
v\'e gather^ that^ at the effusion of the Sixth Vial^ 
the Drying up of the mystic Euphrates does not 
commence, but is completed: in other words, the 
oracle of the Sixth Yial announces, not the 
Gradual Decay of the Turkish Empire, but its 
Completed Downfall. 

12. 1 once thought differently : but, as in con- 
science bound, I freely acknowledge myself to 
have been on that point mistaken. 

In truth, the early commencement of decay in 
the Ottoman Power perfectly agrees with, and 
thus corroborates, the deduction \vhich has already 
been drawm. If the effusion of the Sixth Vial be 
judged to mark the Commencement of the decay 
of Turkey, the W'hole arrangement of the series of 
Vials will be dislocated. 

they left Egypt, passed between the divided waters of the Red 
Sea and the river Jordan. In neither case were those waters 
dried up : so far from it, indeed, that Jordan, as we are ex- 
pressly told, was then overflowing all his banks. But, in the 
still future return of the Israelites and the Jews, the waters of 
the Euphrates will be dried up, and the Delta of the Nile will 
be destroyed. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



31 



The decay commenced almost immediately after 
the fatal defeat at Zinta^ in the year 1697^ where 
I place the passing away of the Second Great 
Woe*. From the time of that defeat^ the Ottoman 
Power has experienced a gradual and regular 
declension. It may not be uninteresting, as it 
certainly is not unimportant^ to mark the several 
steps in its decay. 

The Treaty of Carlowicz, in the year 1699^ 
deprived the Sultan of all sway in Hungary and 
Transylvania^ leaving to him only the town of 
Temeswar : and, furthermore, it despoiled him of 
Azof, and the Ucraine^ and Podolia^ and Dal- 
matia. 

In the year 1718, the treaty of Passarowitz 
drove the Turks from Temeswar, and destroyed all 
hope of recovering their power in Dalmatia and 
Hungary. 

In the year 1771, the Crimea was taken from 
Turkey. 

In the year 1774, the treaty of Kainardge 
secured the independence of the Tartars of the 
Crimea and Bessarabia and the Kouban. 

By a treaty signed at Constantinople in the 
year 1784^ the Ottoman Sovereignty, even in its 

* See my Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, book iv. ch. 7. § ii. 



32 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 



shadow, totally disappeared througliout those pro- 
vinces. 

The treaty of Bucharest, in the year 1812, gave 
to Russia all the fortified places on the left bank 
of the Danube between Galatz and the Black Sea. 

In the year 1816, Servia detached itself from 
the Turkish Empire : and, on the condition of 
paying an annual tribute, secured its real indepen- 
dence under a nominal Suzerainty. 

In the year 1821, the Greek Insurrection 
commenced with the capture of Patras : and, sub- 
sequently, an independent Greek kingdom, having 
Athens for its capital, has been established. 

In the year 1829, the treaty of Adrianople pro- 
claimed the independence of Moldavia and Servia 
and Wallachia : for, in those regions, the Ottoman 
Authority is now only nominal. 

In the year 1830, the Sultan was deprived of 
the Suzerainty of Algeria, which henceforward 
became a French Province. 

And, in the year 1840, Russia, Prussia, Austria, 
and England, guaranteed Egypt to Mehemet Ali 
and his family, on the sole condition of paying a 
tribute to the Sultan. 

Such a course of regular decay has been rarely 
witnessed. But, if we suppose the Effusion of the 



AND KETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 33 

Sixth Vial to mark the Commencement of such 
decay and not its Completion, we shall find our- 
selves compelled to place that Effusion in the 
year 1699 : an arrangement^ which is plainly 
intolerable. 

V. The Turkish Empire has not yet fallen : 
therefore the Sixth Vial cannot as yet have been 
poured out. 

1. There is a matter immediately connected 
with it, which I must take this opportunity of 
noticing : and I do it all the rather, because it has 
led to a good deal of expositorial inaccuracy. 

The three unclean spirits like frogs have very 
commonly been thought to issue respectively, from, 
the mouths of the Dragon and the Wild-Beast 
and the False Prophet, as soon as the Sixth Vial 
begins to flow. Hence it is assumed, as a matter 
of course, that, upon the Effusion of the Sixth 
Vial, St. John beheld them issue from the three 
specified mouths. 

But nothing of the kind is said in the pro- 
phecy. 

St. John beheld them, not in the act of issuing, 
but after they had issued. 

What the Apostle describes himself to have 
seen is the going forth of the three spirits to 

c 



34 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

gather together the Kings of the whole Roman 
World to the war of the Great Day of God 
Almighty. 

The passage runs thus. 

/ saWy from the mouth of the Dragon and from 
the mouth of the Wild- Beast and from the mouth of 
the False Prophet, three unclean spirits as frogs. 

It is subjoined, which had come forth. This 
makes the sense of the passage somewhat more 
explicit : but it is not necessary : and Griesbach 
rejects the past participle, which more fully brings 
out the sense*. Still the sense remains the same. 
When the Sixth Vial was poured out, the Apostle 
beheld, stationed upon the Roman Platform, three 
unclean spirits as frogs, which had already issued 
from the three mouths of the Dragon and the 
Wild-Beast and the False Prophet : and then he 
saw them immediately go forth with the object 
of forming a mighty Confederacy of the Papal 
Kings. The formation of the Confederacy is the 
immediate consequence of the Completed Exhaus- 
tion of the Waters of the mystic Euphrates ; or, 
in other words, it is the immediate result of the 
Downfall of the Ottoman Power produced by the 
Effusion of the Sixth Vial. 

* Gr. licro^ivhvroe.. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 35 

2. From the matters now before us^ we may 
reasonably anticipate^ that the Destruction of 
Turkey will produce the outbreak of that fearful 
war^ which, commencing in Europe, will, at the 
Time of the End or at the Close of the 1260 years, 
pass into Palestine and Egypt and the East. 

Then, as Daniel speaks, will there be a time of 
trouble such as never was since there tvas a nation : 
and then Michael, the Great Prince, will stand up 
for the children of the Prophet^s people ; and that 
ancient people, w^hether Jews or Israelites, wall be 
delivered out of the hand of their enemies. 

3. The agents, who stir up this war, will be 
the three unclean spirits. 

As they do not issue from the mouths of the 
Dragon and the Wild-Beast and the False Prophet 
immediately upon the pouring of the Sixth Vial, 
but were beheld by St. John as having already 
thus issued, we may reasonably suppose them to 
be even now in existence, though they have not 
as yet formally gone forth to the Kings of the 
Earth to gather them to the battle of that great 
day of God Almighty. 

This will not occur, until the Sixth Vial shall 
have been poured out and until the Ottoman 
Power shall have been overturned. 



36 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



Meanwhile^ supposing them to be even now in 
existence, and judging of their characters from 
their parentage, we may easily form no improbable 
conjecture as to what they are. At any rate, 
purely as a fact, we may now perceive, ready pre- 
pared and harmoniously co-operating for a bad 
end, Infidelity, and Military Despotism called 
into action by Anarchy, and Jesuitism of the most 
arrogant and tyrannical Ultramontane School. 

To assure any such co-operation might once 
have been thought paradoxical : but we have 
already seen enough of their conjoined practices 
to feel little difficulty in believing, that they will 
cordially act together against pure religion, and 
that they will be the main artificers of the final 
great Anti-christian Confederation. 

VI. In the present day, with so many signs of 
the times pressing upon us, we cannot wonder, 
that the long lost, or at least long overlooked, 
Ten Tribes of Israel, should have recently called 
up no small amount of interest and attention. 
Hence, we are in a manner constrained to inquire, 
whether, in the remarkable crisis at which we have 
arrived, there is any reasonable prospect of their 
discovery. 

1. Dr. Buchanan thinks, that, in various de- 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 37 

tachments, they exist through nearly the whole of 
Asia. 

2. Dr. Grant of Utica^ in the United States of 
America^ is confident that he has found them^ 
partly converted to Christianity from a very early 
period^ and partly still unconverted^ in the moun- 
tainous region which coincides with the ancient 
Assyria Proper^ and which the Greeks called 
Adiabene. 

3. The missionary, Mr. Samuel, is persuaded, 
that he has found the first deported Two Tribes and 
a Half in the rugged country of Daghistan, which 
stretches for a hundred and forty miles along the 
western shore of the Caspian Sea. 

4. And, lastly, a valuable layman, Sir George 
Rose, in a small work written in a beautiful spirit 
of Christian piety, has lately revived an opinion, 
first, I believe, advanced in the year 1784, that 
the Ten Tribes will be found in the Afghans. 

I much incline to think, that, in all these opi- 
nions, there is truth : though some of them might 
have been propounded more correctly, because 
less exclusively. 

VII. The country, to which the Ten Tribes 
were deported, is very definitely marked out in 
Scripture. 



38 DOWXrALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



1. Pul and Tiglath-Pileser first carried away 
the transjordanic Israelites; Reuben^ and Gad^ 
and the Half Tribe of Manasseh : and^ next, about 
nineteen years later, Shalmaneser carried away 
the remaining Seven Tribes and a Half of the cis- 
jordanic Israelites. 

The whole Ten Tribes, however, were removed 
into the same region of Assyria Proper and into 
parts of the adjoining border country of Media. 
For they are alike said to have been carried into 
Assyria and into the cities of the Medes : that is 
to say, with a more specific geographical designa- 
tion, into Hal ah, and unto Habor the river of 
Gozan, and into the mountain districts of the 
Assyrian Empire, Hara or Haran*. 

Thus the region, into which the entire Ten 
Tribes were carried, was that, which the Greeks 
mainly called Adiabenej-. It lies, north-east of 
Nineveh ; south-east, of Lake Yan ; and directly 
west, of the Lake of Ooroomiah : a; J it coincides 

* See 2 Kings, xv. 29 ; xvii. 3, 6,18: 1 Chron. v. 26. 

E/ u,yi Tt; ycrs^ Eyi^^ar^jv iKnUii Tccg sA^r/^aj, xoc) tou; Ik r^; 
' A^iccforivriS o/xo^'jXov; ot'irizi T^ocrcc/x'jvuy' oi ^s, ouTi ^/ e&Wlay ccXoyon 
rriXiKcvrM 'TroXifCM ffVf^TrXi^o'jffiv iOLvrov;, ov-n (oovXivcra.fx.ivoi: kcckoj; 
0 Udoh: WiTo'i'^ii. — Joseph, de Bell. Judaic, lib. ii. c. 16. § 4. 
p. 1089. Edit. Hudson. A more exact description of what 
was deemed the locality of the Ten Tribes could not be given. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 39 



with the original Assyria Proper, as contradis- 
tinguished from the much more widely-extended 
Assyrian Empire. 

2. It may seem extraordinary^ that the region^ 
described more particularly as the land of Gozan 
and Haran^ should have been vacant^ and thence 
should have been ready to receive such a body of 
emigrants as the Ten Tribes. But this circum- 
stance is readily accounted for by the boast of 
Sennacherib^ which purports^ that his fathers and 
predecessors had exterminated the prior inhabi- 
tants of that district^ annoyed probably by their 
marauding incursions into the lower provinces of 
the Empire : a matter of no easy accomplishment^ 
when both the character of the free-booters and 
the mountainous nature of the country are con- 
sidered j and thence giving occasion to much vain- 
glorious boasting*. The districts of Ashur or 
Assyria Proper^, w^hich geographically compre- 
hended the country of Adiabene^, the policy of the 
three Assyrian Monarchs led them to people afresh 
with the deported Israelites : for^ in these^ broken 
by conquest and far removed from their own 
country^ they naturally expected to find more 
quiet and less troublesome neighbours than the 
expelled previous ogcupants. 

* See 2 Kings, xix. 12 ; Isaiah, xxxvii. 11, 12. 



40 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

3. Who these previous occupants were^ it is 
not very difficult to determine. 

They were plainly, I think, a remnant of those 
military children of Cush, who, when their great 
leader Nimrod was divinely compelled to leave 
Babylon, went forth with him into the land 
originally occupied by Ashur ; and, in the lower 
part of the country, on the banks of the Tigris, 
founded Nineveh*. Meanwhile, the districts were 
tenanted by turbulent bodies of haughty Cuthites, 
mingled with fragments of the original Ashurites : 
and these were the people, whose extermination 
by the later Assyrian kings made room for the 
subdued and expatriated Israelites. 

4. It is not a little remarkable, that the parallel 
expulsion of a branch of the same warlike people 
from Egypt should have made room for the an- 
cestors of the Israelites in the days of Jacob and 
Joseph. 

The expulsion itself is not mentioned in Scrip- 
ture : but, clearly, the Israelites could not have 
been placed in the fertile land of Goshen, unless 

* See Gen. x. 10-12. Mr. Layard's discoveries, and the 
tradition of tlie country which makes Ashur, in the Chaidee 
form Athur, the lieutenant of Nimrod, fully establish the mar- 
ginal rendering in our Bible Translation : Out of that land 
(Babel), he (Nimrod) went forth thto Assyria and builded 
Nineveh, 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



41 



that land had then been empty ; and we learn 
from other sources, that the Hycsos or Pallic 
Shepherd-Kings, after their first invasion of 
Egypt, had actually been driven out very shortly 
before the descent of the Israelites under Jacob 

These warlike shepherds, like their kindred the 
Philistines and the Phoenicians, were of the great 
military House of Cush : and their character of 
Palli or Shepherds, which implied anything rather 
than a poetically love-making and pastorally-piping 
race, is impressed alike upon the exterminated 
Cuthim of Adiabene and the expelled Cuthim of 
Egypt. Each country had its Goshen or Gozan : 
and, as the Gozan of Adiabene, now slightly cor- 
rupted into ZozaUy denotes, we are informed. 
Pasture ; so the Goshen of Egypt, a name affixed 
by its invaders from the shores of the Persian 
Gulf, similarly denotes The Land of Pasturage or 
The Land of Shepherds-\ . 

Well might Sennacherib boast of the prowess 
of his fathers in exterminating such a race from 
such a country : for, in whatever quarter of the 

* For a full discussion of this curious subject, see my Origin 
of Pagan Idolatry, book vi. chap. 5. 

t The word Goshen, as well as the kindred word Palli 
(whence Palestine or ^allisthan), is, I believe, Sanscrit. 



43 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



globe they appeared^ they were always the most 
warlike of the sons of men^ and in each successive 
great Empire always had the preeminence. 

VIII. Here^ then^ in a most accm-ately specified 
region ; that^ to wit^ where the western boundary 
of Media touches the eastern or north-eastern 
boundary of Assj^ia Proper : the expatriated Ten 
Tribes were originally planted^ whatever colonies 
or offshoots might subsequently penetrate into 
other parts of Asia. 

Accordingly^ down to the fifth century of the 
Christian era^ we have distinct evidence^ that there 
(at least as the nucleus of the Ten Tribes) they 
were^ and that there they continued to dwell. 

1. Josephus attests^ that Ezra^ full five centuries 
before Christy or aboat two hundred years after 
their completed deportation by Shalmaneser^ not 
only read to the proper Jews at Babylon the letter 
of Xerxes or Artaxerxes^ but likewise sent a copy 
of it into IMedia to ""^ eir brethren the Israelites : 
and he adds^ that^ while (with the exception of 
many detached individuals^ who journeyed with 
their effects to Babylon, wishing to return to 
Jerusalem) Two Tribes only went back to Palestine 
and became subject to the Romans ; the whole 
multitude of the Israelites, to the amount of in- 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



43 



numerable myriads^ remained behind^ down even 
to his own day^ in the region beyond the Eu- 
phrateSj whither they had been originally carried 
away^. 

2. From another statement of the Jewish His- 
torian^ it seems to have been in his time famiHarly 
known^ that the Israelites were yet dvvxlling in 
the same land of Adiabene beyond the Euphrates^ 
whither they had been successively transported by 
Pul and Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser. For 
he represents Agrippa^ in the speech by which he 
would dissuade the Jews from entering into that 
fatal war with the Ptomans which issued in the 
destruction of their city and temple^ as urging^ 
among other matters^ that they must not vainly 
look for aid from their brethren in Adiabene 
beyond the Euphrates : inasmuch as^ even if they 
had the power^ they would not lightly embark in 
such an undertaking ; but^ in truths that it was 
not in their power^ for the dominance of the Par- 
thians^ whose Empire lay between them and Jeru- 
salem^ would not suffer itf. 

3. So again, Jerome, at the beginning of the 

* Joseph. Ant. Judaic, lib. xi. c. 5. § 2. p. 482. 

t Joseph, de Bell. Judaic. 1113. ii. c. 16. § 4. p. 1089. I have 
already quoted this passage, as marking the country of the 
deportation. 



44 DOWNFALL OP THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



fifth century, attests, even repeatedly, as a matter 
then incapable of contradiction : that the Ten 
Tribes still remained in the land of their original 
deportation, having never, collectively or uni- 
versally, departed from it, v/hatever colonies or 
insulated detachments might have gone forth^, 

4. I may add, that oblique notices of the same 
circumstance appear in more than one place of 
Holy Scripture itself. 

When the Apostles first exercised the miraculous 
gift of tongues, it is said, that, among the foreign 
brethren out of every nation under heaven then 
dwelling at Jerusalem, there were Partkians and 
Medes : that is to say, strangers out of the very 
region into which the Ten Tribes had been 
deportedf . 

In like manner, St. Paul, when pleading his 
cause before Agrippa, speaks familiarly, as if it 
were a matter well known, of the Tivelve Tribes 
(the Ten Tribes as well as the Two Tribes) hoping 
to come to the 2^'^omise made of God unto their 
father s%, 

St. James, likewise, addresses his Epistle to the 

* Hieron. Comment, in Hier. xxxi. 16. Comment, in Ezek. 
xvi. 55 ; xxiii. 1 ; xxxvii. 15. Oper. tom. iv. p. 29S, 378, 379, 
399, 447. 

f Acts, ii. 5-9. % Acts, xxvi. 6, 7. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



45 



Twelve Tribes, which are described by him as 
scattered abroad^, I consider this to be a very 
remarkable attestation : for it not only shows^ 
that the Twelve Tribes, whether viewed as the 
Two Tribes or the Ten Tribes^ were not then con- 
fined within the limits of a single district ; but, 
from the whole context^ it additionally shows, that 
members of all the Twelve Tribes, that Dodeca- 
phylon specified by St. Paul, had, even at that early 
time, embraced Christianity. 

5. It is a matter of uncertainty, when the 
apocryphal Esdras lived. Some place him before, 
and some after, the time of our Lord. Internal 
evidence seems to prove, that the Work, which 
bears his name, was the production of a Rabbinical 
Jew. This, however, is a matter of no great 
consequence to my present purpose. His Work 
contains a very curious attestation, though con- 
siderably mixed with fable, to the fully existing 
persuasion, that the Ten Tribes had been carried 
beyond the Euphrates to the precise country 
marked out for them in Scripture History. 

Those, says he, are the Ten Tribes, which were 
carried away prisoners out of their own land in the 
time of Osea the King, ivhom Salmanasar the King 

* James, i. 1, 2. 



46 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 

of Assyria led away captive. And he carried them 
over the waters : and so they came into another land. 
But they took this counsel among themselves : that 
they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and 
go forth into a further country where never mankind 
dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes 
which they never kept in their own land. And they 
entered into Euphrates by the narrow passages of 
the river : for the Most High then showed signs for 
them, and held still the flood till they were passed 
over. For, through that country, there vjas a great 
way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the 
same region is called Aksaketh. Then divelt they 
there until the latter time : and now, when they 
shall begin to come, the Highest shall stay the 
springs of the stream again, that they may go 
through^. 

There is a singular mixture of truth and 
romance in this statement. Yet^ with proper dis- 
crimination^ I cannot but consider it as valuable. 

It correctly informs us^ that they entered into 
Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river^ 
and not lower down where the stream would be 
so broad as to offer a serious impediment : and, 
when they return, he speaks of their crossing near 
* 2 Esdr. xiii. 40^47. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 47 

the springs of the stream again. But he gratui- 
tously adds^ in eacli case^ a miraculous interposi- 
tion^ which^ after the manner of the passage 
through the Red Sea and Jordan^ should hold 
still the flood till they were passed over. 

This idea^ in connexion with the Euphrates^ 
seems to have been borrowed from the text in 
Isaiah^ where it is said that the River^ as the 
Euphrates was called by way of eminence, sliould 
be smitten into seven shallow streams, so that 
those, who were returning from Assyria, namely 
the Ten Tribes, might be enabled to go over dry- 
shod : while it is added, like as it was to Israel in 
the day tha t he came up out of the land of Egypt^, 

But, if the idea of the apocryphal waiter thus 
originated, he did not observe, that the comparison 
at the close of the text respects, not the mode, but 
the circumstance, of the exode : for, in the pro- 
phecy, the flood is not held still as were the waters 
of Jordan, but is so exhausted by being divided 
into shallow runlets, that men might pass over 
without wetting their feet. 

Furthermore : this same Rabbinical writer 
speaks of their passing into a country beyond the 
Euphrates, which, as would obviously be the case 
* Isaiah, xi. 15, 16. 



48 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



when a whole people moved with their flocks and 
herds^ occasioned them a long and tedious journey : 
and that country he describes as one where never 
mankind dwelt. 

Here he is accurate^ so far as the character of 
the country is concerned ; for the Israelites found 
it empty by reason of the extermination^ or at 
least the removal^ of the former inhabitants : but 
he is inaccurate^ though the origination of his 
inaccuracy is easih" detected^ when he says that 
mankind never dwelt there. 

Again : he is sufficiently correct in saying, that 
the Ten Tribes^ separated from the multitude of 
the heathen^ wished henceforth to keep their 
statutes^ which they never kept in their own land : 
for^ even to this day^ they seem^ by frequent 
intercom'se with each other (as Dr. Buchanan 
states)^ to have continued tolerably clear of apos- 
tasy ; and^ when the false Esdras wrote^ they seem 
(as we gather from Josephus) to have still care- 
fully retained their national statutes. 

Finally^ unless I greatly mistake^ we have a 
direct verbal intimation given us by Esdras, that 
the country, which they would reach by crossing 
at the narrow passages of the Euphrates, is the 
very country, to which Scripture History directs 



AND RETUUN OE THE TEN THIBES. 



49 



us. The region^ where they settled, was called, 
he tells us, Arsareth. It seems tolerably evident, 
that, by the slight corruption of inserting a sirgle 
letter, Arsareth is no other than Arareth : for 
so, both the mountain of the ArFs appulse, and 
the land of Armenia in its widest extent, w^ere 
equally denominated*. It was plainly in close 
connexion with the great Assyrian Empire : for, 
to Ararat or Armenia, Adrammelech and Sharezer, 
the sons of Sennacherib king of Assyria, fled, 
after the murder of their father, as he was wor- 
shipping in the house of his vulture-idol Nisroch 
at Nineveh. Probably, they were well aware, that 
they would be received and concealed by the 
Israelites of the Ten Tribes, who could entertain 
no very cordial affection for a King of Assyria. 

IX. We seem to have now ascertained some 
very important particulars. 

1. The Ten Tribes were deported into that 
mountainous region, which constituted Assyria 
Proper, which mainly coincided wdth the district 
by the Greeks called Adiabene, and which bordered 
upon Media and Armenia. 

2. In the early part of the fifth century, they 
were known to be still in this same region : 

* Gen. viii. 4 ; Isaiah, xxxvii. 38 ; Jerem. li. 27. 

D 



50 



DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 



though, doubtless, as, from the time of Shal- 
maneser downward, their numbers had continued 
to increase, offshoots or colonies w^ould, in the true 
Oriental nomadic fashion, seek new settlements in 
various parts of Asia. 

3. Finally, whea St. James wrote his Epistle, 
about the year 60, some individual members of 
the Ten Tribes had already, in their scattered 
state, received the Gospel, though without losing 
their distinctive national character. 

4. Now it certainly seems, that these particulars 
afford a reasonable clue to the discovery of the 
long-lost Ten Tribes. 

In point of fact, we know^ that they were, in 
the first instance, deported into Assyria : and the 
special part of Assyria is easily ascertained, by its 
being conterminous to the Western boundary of 
Media, in certain cities of which some of them are 
said to have been placed. 

In point of prophecy, we are assured, that 
they will be restored out of Assyria: w^hile^ 
synchronically, the Dispersed of Judah will be 
gathered out of the four corners of the earth. But, 
though Assyria is thus specially mentioned as 
containing the nucleus of the Ten Tribes, we seem 
to gather, from the terms of the prediction, that 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 51 



they will also return^ in various detacliments, 
from other parts of Asia : such as^ the Oriental 
Cush or Cusha-dwip within^ as the Hindoos call 
the immense region of (what the Greeks called) 
the Asiatic Ethiopia ; and Elam^ or some parts 
of Persia ; and Shinar^ or the Babylonian Chal- 
dea^. 

5. From these matters^ the conclusion is quite 
obvious. 

If the nucleus of the Ten Tribes^ however 
diminished by colonising or by the hostile ag- 
gression of barbarous neighbours, is to be re- 
stored out of Assyria, they must, in order to the 
accomplishment of the prophecy, be still in 
Assyria. 

X. Thus, so far as evidence, historical and 
scriptural, is concerned, the question stood, when 
Dr. Grant of Utica, in the United States of America, 
visited and spent some considerable time in the 
district, whither, it is well known, the Ten Tribes 
were originally carried. 

His statement is : that he found matters 
precisely such as might have been expected from 
the knowledge which we already possessed. 

* Isaiah, xi. 11-16; xxvii. 12, 13; Hosea. xi. 8-11: Zech. 
X. 6-11. 



52 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



1. The people were divided into two portions, 
distinct from each other and yet acknowledging 
the relationship of a common origin. 

Part, from a very remote period, had been 
Christians : who received the name of Nestorians, 
because, with Nestorius, they would not apply to 
the Virgin Mary the unscriptural title of Theotocos 
or Mother of God ; deeming it a virtual denial of 
Christ^s humanity and thence a nullification of the 
doctrine of the atonement. 

And Part still adhered exclusively to the Law 
of Moses and the Levitical Ordinances : remaining, 
so far as Christianity was concerned, in an uncon- 
verted state. 

We have only, says Dr. Grant, to see the Jews 
and Nestorians together, and hear their mutual 
recriminations ; the one charging the other with 
apostasy from their ancient religion^ and the latter 
accusing the former as the guilty rejecters of the 
Messiah : and we shall be at no loss how to account 
for the existing antipathy between the Nestorians 
and the Jews, I was recently present at just such 
an interview between them : and it required all the 
address I was master of to pacify and make them 
treat each other somewhat like brethren. When 
this was effected, they conversed freely together 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 53 

{though with occasional aspersion) on the subject of 
their former fraternal relation as sons of Israel : 
a relation, so fully recognised by both parties, as to 
form the basis of their most pointed remarks^. 

In this passage and elsewhere, Dr. Grant 
occasionally says Jews where he ought to have 
said Israelites, This very curious Work is entitled 
The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes : and it contains 
much more to the same effect. 

TVe are certainly, said they, beni Israel : there 
is no doubt of itf. 

Dr. Grant subjoins : It is not a complicated 
history, requiring a detail of incidents or language 
liable to be misapprehended or forgotten. It is one 
simple bare fact, so unique and prominent in its 
character that there is no room for mistake. At 
the same time, the people are so peculiar in their 
language, character, and circumstances, that it was 
doubtless true of the ivhole, if of any. It is the one 
simple fact : that the Nestorians are, what they 
profess to be, the children of Israel. 

He then adds : Direct and positive as is the 
testimony of the Nestorians themselves respecting 
their Hebretv ancestry, we need not rest so important 



* The Nestorians. p. 201, 202. f Ibid. 122. 



54 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



a question on their testimony alone. — The Jews, who 
dwell among them, acknowledge the relationship. 
They admit, that the Nestorians are as truly the 
descendants of the Israelites as themselves, — Provi- 
dentially for our cause, The Ten Tribes are not all 
nominally christian, A remnant seems to have been 
left as luitnesses in the case. Dispersed through 
the country of the Nestoinaiis, and surrounding them 
on every side, are some thousands of nominal Jews, 
still adhering to Judaism, who claim to be a part 
of the Ten Tribes carried away captive by the Kings 
of Assyria. — They testify, though sometimes reluc- 
tantly, that they and the Nestorians are brethren of 
the same stock ; that they and the Nestorians have 
a common relation to the House of Israel, a common 
origin. — They are ashamed to admit, that such an 
apostasy has taken place from the faith of their 
fathers : and they are reluctant to acknowledge 
their ivorst enemies as brethren. — It is only to those 
who have gained their confidence, that they readily 
make the acknowledgment. — The first time I my- 
self heard this testimony given by the Jews was 
March Q, 1840: ichich I recorded at the time as 
follows : 

I received a visit from two learned Jews, Ezekiel 
and Daniel, of Ooroomiah : who, in presence of 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 55 

the Bishops Mar Yoosuph and Mar Eliyah, two 
Priests, and other Nestorians, most explicitly ac- 
knowledged, that the Nestorians were the sons 
OF Israel ; a circumstance, with which, they 
affirmed, the Jews were well acquainted. Priest 
Dunka, for my sake, then asked them, if they were 
sure of the fact. They replied emphatically : that 
they knew, that the Nestorians were children of 
Israel ; but, as the Nestorians had departed from 
the faith of their fathers, their people were ashamed 
to own them as brethren. 

More recently^ other Jews have repeatedly made 
the same statement to the writer and to some of 
his associates in the mission. On one occasion, 
their chief Rabbi confirmed the testimony of the 
Hebrew origin of the Nestorians, while in their 
synagogue, and in hearing of Messrs, Holliday, 
Stocking, and myself. He said: that the Nes- 
torians apostatised from the Jewish Faith in the 
days of Christ or his Apostles, 

2. Dr. Grant mentions two particulars^ whicli 
must by no means be pretermitted. 

Like the early Hebrew Churcb^ the Nestorians 
largely unite the Observance of the Law with Be- 
lief in Christ, 

And^ furthermore^ . in the midst of tribes of a 



56 DOWNFALL QY THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

different tongue, they speak a modern dialect of 
the Syriac, which differs not more from the ancient 
Syriac, familiar as that dialect must have been to 
the Ten Tribes from their neighbourhood to and 
close connexion with the kingdom of Syria, than 
modern Greek differs from ancient Greek. 

XL Sir George Rose, in a very ingenious 
pamphlet which he has entitled The Afghans 
the Ten Tribes, states : that Dr. Grant^s opinion 
has been impugned, and, as he thinks, over- 
thrown, by Dr. Robinson. 

I have not seen the Work of that gentleman : 
but, so far as I can judge from alleged facts, I 
do not perceive hovf Dr. Grant can be confuted, 
save by establishing against him a charge, either 
of unreasoning credulity, or of gross misrepresent- 
ation, or of absolute falsehood. 

Sir George thinks it unnecessary to produce 
against Dr. Grant all the erudition and acuteness 
of Dr. Robinson, because he deems three main 
considerations sufficient to overthrow the system 
which has been raised. He does not say, whether 
these three considerations are put forth by him- 
self or borrowed from Dr. Robinson : but the 
mode, in which he speaks of them, seems ob- 
viously to imply, that he esteems them the 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



57 



strength of the battle*. They shall be con- 
sidered^ therefore^ in their order. 

1. Dr. Grant, for various duly assigned rea- 
sons, supposed : that the Nestorians, now seated 
in Assyria Proper, and along with them various 
unconverted adherents to the Law of Moses, are 
descended from the Ten Tribes. 

Now, without any discussion of these reasons 
in regard to their impeached validity. Sir George 
broadly contends : that the mere fact of the 
Nestorians having embraced Christianity many 
centuries ago, completely negatives the theory 
that they are descended from the Ten Tribes 
of Israelf. 

I am unable to discover the force of this ar- 
gument. 

Sir George rests his proof upon a general as- 
sertion contained in the thirty-seventh chapter 
of Ezekiel : these bones are the W'HOLE House 
of Israel, 

If this declaration is to be received literally 
in its full grammatical sense, as I understand 

* I do not understand what Sir George means, when he 
speaks of two objections noticed by Dr. Robinson, and there- 
fore his own. Are they two out of the three considerations ? 
or are they two component parts of the first consideration ? 

t The Afghans the Ten Tribes, p. 47. 



58 DOWNJ'ALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

Sir George to take it^ the result will be : that 
not a single Israelite can be converted until the 
day of the national restoration. 

Unless such be the purport of the argument^ 
I do not see its force. But a conclusion of this 
sweeping description is contradicted by matter 
of fact. 

The great Apostle Paul himself was of the 
Tribe of Benjamin : and^ if it be replied that 
Benjamin was politically united to Judah and 
was thence never reckoned as one of the Ten 
Tribes ; stilly Anna the prophetess was of the 
Tribe of Asher^ and St. James addresses members 
of all the Twelve Tribes as having been converted 
to Christianity. 

Nay^ if we give up the Nestorian Chi^istians, 
this will afford no proof that a remnant of the 
Ten Tribes does not still exist in the land of their 
original deportation. In that very country, we 
find a divided nation. Let us^ then^ in submission 
to the objection started by Sir George Rose, throw 
aside the Nestorians ; and we shall not the less 
have an unbelieving portion of the Ten Tribes, 

2. Dr. Grant states it to be the declared prin- 
ciple of the Nestorians^ that Circumcision has been 
superseded by Baptism, 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



59 



Sir George deems this fatal to the opinion 
before us. 

Now^ if, for a moment^ we admit it to be fatal 
to the Israelitish Origin of the Nestorians^ the 
same answer will lie to that objection as lay to 
its predecessor. The most perfect disproof of 
the Nestorians being Israelites will avail nothing 
against the origin of the unbelievers from the 
deported Ten Tribes, 

But I venture to deny that the adoption of 
the principle is fatal to the opinion before us. 

God^ says Sir George^ made Circumcision to 
be the everlasting covenant, by which he would 
confirm to Israel the land of Canaan as an ever- 
lasting possession. Therefore^ if Circumcision be 
relinquished^ the claim is foregone^. 

These are the premises of the argument : and 
this is the conclusion drawn from them. 

But we cannot admit^ that such is the true con- 
struction of God^s covenant with Abraham. 

It is inconsistent^ both with facts and with 
Sir George^ s own statement. 

For the Israelites to abandon Circumcision, says 
he^ would be to renounce their share in the land of 
Canaan. 

If such; then^ were the case^ the whole nation^ 
* The Afghans, p. 48, 49. 



60 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

while yet in the wilderness of Sinai^ had already 
renounced the land : for none of those^ who were 
born in the desert^ had been circumcised; and, 
save Joshua and Calebs the whole generation that 
came out of Egypt had perished. Nevertheless, 
while still uncii^cumcised, they actually entered into 
the land : and not only thus practically took 
possession of it, but even formally received the 
investiture of it from God himself*. No doubt, 
Circumcision was renewed after they had passed 
the Jordan : but this circumstance could not do 
away facts which had already occurredf. 

Nor is the present the sole difficulty in the way 
of the opinion advocated by Sir George. 

Such an opinion, when legitimately followed 
out, plainly involves an assertion : that Circumci- 
sion, in regard to both the Two Tribes and the 
Ten Tribes, would never be abolished ; but that the 
practice of it would still, even after their Baptism 
and Conversion to Christianity, be required as 
the everlasting condition of their tenure of the 
land. 

Perhaps we may not be able to prove in mood 
and form, that it will not be required. But, to 
say nothing of the contrariety of such a specula- 
tion to the very genius of Christianity, the obser- 
* See Josh. L f See Josh. v. 2-9. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



61 



vance of the rite is never once mentioned in any of 
the vivid prophetic descriptions of the state of the 
Israelites after their Conversion and Restoration 
to the land which God gave to their forefathers^. 

3. Dr. Grant, following the plain declaration of 
Scripture as to the land whither the Ten Tribes 
w^ere deported, believes, that they were actually 
planted in that very land : and, for this purpose, 
as we have seen, the land must have been rendered 
vacant by the extermination or at least the trans- 
plantation of the former inhabitants. 

Against this simple question of Fad, namely, 
that both the country and the cities had been 
emptied of their former inhabitants, Sir George 
argues : that the Assyrian Monarch would hardly 
have planted an indomitable nation like the Israel- 
ites in so difficult a country as the mountainous 
region now called Curdistan, when the rich and 
populous province of Media would have been so 
much better calculated for the King^s political 
object^. 

It is dangerous to oppose a speculative pro- 
bability to a recorded fact. Not uncommonly, 
such a process creates matter for its own confuta- 

* Compare Isaiah. Ix. Ixvi. ; Jerem. xxxi. ; Ezek, xxxvi. 
xxxvii.; Zechar. xiv. f The Afghans, p. 49. 



62 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



tion. If Media were already rich and populous^ 
the deported Israelites^ as a body^ could not have 
been placed in a then fully occupied country^ sim- 
ply because there would have been no room for 
them. To receive and accommodate such a multi- 
tude^ a region would be required^ which the policy 
of the Sovereign had stripped of its former in- 
habitants. Such^ accordingly^ is the exact scrip- 
tural account. The first detachment of exiles 
were deported exclusively to Assyria ; at least, no 
other country is specified^ : the second, described 
collectively as Israel, were also carried away into 
Assyria, and locally placed in Halah and by Habor 
the river of Gozan ; but, that region being now 
filled up by the new occupants, some that still 
remained were placed in certain cities of Media, 
which cities must obviously have lain in that 
we&tern part of Media which bordered on Assyria, 
and which seem to have been similarly and for the 
same reason depopulatedf. 

Here we have, I submit, a record of distinct 
Facts : and we cannot safely allow them to be set 
aside, merely because it is conjectured, that policy 
would forbid the planting of a nation, supposed 
indeed to be turbulent, but much more probably 
* 2 Kings. XV. 29. t Ibid. xvii. 5, 6. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



63 



broken in spirit by recent calamity^ in a 
mountainous and difficult country. 

XII. Sir George Rose himself contends : that 
the Afghans are the descendants, and (as I 
understand him) the exclusive descendants of the 
Ten Tribes. 

1. This opinion, as to the origin of the 
Afghans, was first, I believe, brought forward, 
in the year 1784, by Mr. Vansittart in a letter to 
Sir William Jones*. 

Certain objections to it. Sir George very ably 
disposes of : and I see no reason, why it may not 
be adopted, as at least highly probable, though it 
does not possess the sort of certainty involved in 
a scripturally well-defined countryf. The fault of 

* See Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 67-76. 

t When Mr. Vansittart's Translation of a Persian Abridg- 
ment of the Asrarul AfagMnahivdi?> transmitted to Sir William 
Jones, he strongly recommended an inquiry into the literature 
and history of the Afghans. In one speculation, however, the 
learned President strikes me as having been mistaken. 

We learn from Esdras, he says, that the Ten Tribes, after 
a wandering journey , came to a country called Arsareth : 
where, we may siipjjose, they settled. — A considerable district 
under the dominion of the Afghans is called Hazareh or 
Hazaret, which might easily have been changed into the word 
used by Esdras. Asiat. Res. vol. ii. p. 76. 

The conjecture is etymologic ally ingenious : but it fails, both 
circumstantially and geographically. 



64 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWEK^ 

Sir George's Work is, not the opinion that the 
Afghans are descendants of the Ten Tribes^ but 
the imphcation contained in the propounding of 
another opinion : the opinion^ namely^ that the 
present inhabitants of the ancient land of Ashur^ 
whither^ as a Fact, we know the Ten Tribes to 
have been deported^ are not their descendants, 

2. Dr. Grant remarks^ that the Christian 
Population of Assyria and the adjoining western 
district of Media may not be far short of 
200,000. 

Sir George thinks^ that this, even alone, is 
conclusive against Dr. Grant's opinion, inasmuch 
as he offers a maximum of 200,000, as the 
WHOLE of the progeny of the Ten Tribes, 

I did not understand Dr. Grant to make any 
such assertion. He appeared to me to say, that 
this was about the present Christian population o^ 

Circumstantially : because', as it has since been learned, 
Hazaret is only a recent conquest of the Afghans. 

Geographically : because, being on the confines of western 
Hindostan, it is irreconcileable with the locahty to which Esdras 
conducts the Ten Tribes by crossing the narrow passages of 
the Euphrates, and proceeding thence in the same dii'ection 
to a land uninhabited. 

The Arsareth of Esdras is, I think, pretty plainly Ararath 
or Anneriia. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 65 

the country into which the Ten Tribes were 
deported: and, possibly, the unconverted popu- 
lation may be about the same. Now this is a 
very good reason for supposing, that various 
colonies have gone forth from the parent stock 
when the tyrannical pressure of the mighty 
Assyrian Empire was removed by its overthrow : 
and thence, it affords a strong collateral argument 
for the Israeli tic origin of the Afghans ; because it 
is quite clear, that the whole progeny of the Ten 
Tribes cannot be confined to 200,000, or even 
400,000. But I see not, how it at all aids 
Sir George, in overthrowing the opinion of Dr. 
Grant, and in establishing (as I understand him) 
the eocclusive right of the Afghans to be deemed 
the Children of the Ten Tribes. 

3. In truth, Sir George, by his management 
of a probably correct opinion, brings out a 
result contradictory alike to Scripture and to 
Geography. 

He finds himself compelled to make the coun- 
try of the Afghans, or rather the first of the 
successive countries which they occupied in their 
progress eastward, to be the region, whither the 
Ten Tribes were originally deported. Now Scrip- 
ture assures us, that this region was Assyria and 

£ 



66 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 

a neighbouring district of Media. But Sir George^ 
suppressing all mention of Assyria^ would make 
Media alone the land to which the Ten Tribes 
were deported : and^ at the same time^ supposes^ 
that they must have crossed the Euphrates not 
far from the middle point of the course of the 
river. Now such a local transit would bring them 
far too much south for the greater part of even 
Media : and^ at the same time^ it would be quite 
out of their line of march to the still laterally 
more northern province of Ashur ; for the due 
reaching of which province they must, as the 
apocryphal Esdras speaks^ have crossed by the 
narrow passages of the river ; that is to say^ con- 
siderably higher up the stream. 

To meet this difficulty, which springs imme- 
diately out of the very plain scriptural account^ 
he tells us, that the extensive province of modern 
Khorassan is known as identical with the Media 
of ancient Geography. 

But, even if such a statement were strictly 
accurate, we should still have in it a total omission 
of Ashur. And yet Ashur, from the mode in 
which it is mentioned, is evidently the chief land 
of the deportation : for the cities of the Medes 
are only subjoined supplemicntally. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



67 



I doubtj however^ whether it is geographically 
accurate. 

In order to form some judgment on the ques- 
tion, I compared a map of ancient geography 
with the excellent modern map of Persia in the 
Atlas published (I believe) under the inspection 
of the late eminent Sir John Barrow : and, from 
that comparison, I drew out, as faithfully as I 
could, a result fatal to the assertion of Sir George 
Rose. 

So far from the modern Khorassan coinciding 
with ancient Media, Khorassan, from a com- 
parison of my two maps, lies directly east of 
Media, and commences where ancient Media ter- 
minated : for the eastern boundary of ancient 
Media loosely corresponds with the fifty-third 
degree of East Longitude ; and this, so far as I 
can make out the comparison, is the very degree 
of East Longitude where the western boundary 
of modern Khorassan loosely commences*. 

To suppose, then, that, even if Media had been 
the exclusive region into which the Ten Tribes 
were deported, they would therefore have been, 

* I reduced, as well as I could, the reckoning of East Lon- 
gitude from the Fortunate Islands to the reckoning of the same 
Longitude from Greenwich. 



68 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

by Shalmaneser, deported into modern Khorassan, 
is, unless either my maps mislead me or I have 
totally misunderstood them, a plain impossibility. 

4. But let us only follow the scriptural state- 
ment, and all will be abundantly clear. 

The Ten Tribes were originally planted, partly 
in the then unpeopled province of Ashur, and 
partly in certain cities of the western part of 
Media. From this locality, the germ of the 
Afghan Colony (for I am far from denying the 
Afghans to be Israelites) would pass eastward 
through the whole breadth of Media into Kho- 
rassan : and thence, as Sir George very well traces 
them, through Caubul and Cashmere, into their 
present settlement on the borders of Hindostan. 

Hence, provided these distinctions are observed, 
and provided we give up the untenable scheme 
of making Khorassan the country in which they 
were first planted when deported from Samaria, 
I see no reason to reject, or rather indeed much 
reason to adopt, the opinion, that the Afghans 
are descended from the Ten Tribes, though they 
may not be the sole descendants. 

XIII, In accordance with the opinion of Dr. 
Buchanan, various colonies of Israelites seem to 
be existing throughout nearly the whole of Asia. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 69 

1. This is stated by him as a fact. 

In Cashmere^ Tartary, Persia^ Cochin^ and 
Malabar^ allied Communities of Israelites have 
been discovered^ who appear to have been sepa- 
rated from the primitive stocky long before the 
last dispersion of the Jews properly so called, 
and indeed before the time of the Babylonian 
Captivity. These Communities, though, by suc- 
cessive migrations in the course of so many cen- 
turies, they are now geographically separated from 
each other, are said, still, by letters and occa- 
sional visits, to keep up a mutual intercourse and 
connexion*. 

2. A question may be raised, whether some of 
these are J ews, or whether they be fragments of 
the Ten Tribes. 

Dr. Buchanan tells us, that, at Cochin, there is 
a colony of Jews, who retain the tradition that 
they arrived in India soon after the Babylonian 
Captivity. There are, it seems, in that province, 
two classes of Jews : the white Jews and the 
black Jews. The black Jews are those, who are 
supposed to have arrived at that early period : 
the white Jews emigrated from Europe in later 
ages. What seems to countenance the tradition 
* See Buchanan's Christian Researches, p. 310-324. 



70 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



of the black Jews is^ that they have copies of 
those books of the Old Testament which were 
written previously to the Captivity^ but none 
whose dates are subsequent to that event*. 

The tradition of the black Jews is^ no doubt^ of 
some importance : but the greater part of the 
Books of the Old Testament^ that were written 
before the Babylonian Captivity^ mighty so far as 
dates are concerned^ have been possessed by the 
deported Ten Tribes as well as by Jewish emi- 
grants from Babylon. This part of the evidence^ 
therefore, leaves it doubtful^ whether the so-called 
black Jews of Cochin are descended from the Two 
Tribes or from the Ten Tribes. 

3. As far as I can judge^ there is the same 
doubtfulness respecting an extraordinary Hebrew 
colony in China. 

A very curious and interesting account of them 
has been published by Mr, Finn^ under the title 
of The Jews in China : and he himself believes 
them to be Jews, not Israelites of the Ten Tribes. 

His argument to prove them Jews of the Re- 
storation from Chaldea strikes me as not being 
perfectly conclusive. 

* Buchanan's Memoir on an Indian Ecclesiastical Establish- 
ment, p. 117, 118. 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 71 

It is based npon their knowledge of Ezra^ the 
second lawgiver and reformer of the people, and 
upon their possession of some portions of the 
Sacred Books written after the captivity of the 
Ten Tribes by Shalmaneser. 

He admits, that the force of this argument 
might be abated^ by taking into account^ that^ 
for several centuries^ their Sacred Books and some 
of their teachers have reached them from another 
country in the west^ and by thence concluding 
that thus only may have been imported the 
later Scriptures and the Jewish peculiarities. But 
he adds : This conclusion is entirely gratuitous, 
without evidence of even the lowest degree. 

Now all that may be perfectly true : but it 
forms only a narrow^ basis for a valid argument. 

He admits it to be plain^ that this colony must 
be a very ancient offshoot^ from the circumstance 
of their ignorance of the name of Jesus until it 
was mentioned to them by the missionaries : and^ 
thence^ not very satisfactorily^ lays it dow^n^ that 
they branched off from the Jerusalem Jews an- 
terior to the incarnation of Christ. 

That they branched off from the parent stock 
anterior to the incarnation^ is plain enough from 
their ignorance of the very name of Jesus : but 



72 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER, 

this is no proof, that they were an off- shoot 
from the Jerusalem Jews after their return from 
the Babylonian Captivity^ as Mr. Finn^s language 
seems evidently to import. If they be Jews^ as 
contradistinguished from Israelites^ I should deem 
it far more probable^ that they had emigrated east- 
ward from Babylon and Chaldea during the cap- 
tivity^ than from the much more remote Jerusalem 
after the return from the Captivity. 

When they first became known to the Jesuit 
missionaries at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century^ one of them^ who visited those mission- 
aries at Pekin, knew nothing of the appellation 
Jew, but styled himself an Israelite, This cer- 
tainly seems to favour the idea^ that they are 
rather a fragment of the Ten Tribes, than Jews 
either from Babylon or Jerusalem. 

In the year 1816^ Dr. Morrison heard of them 
from a Mohammedan near Pekin, as subsisting in 
Kae-fung-foo under the old name bestowed upon 
them by the Chinese. They were still called The 
Religion of cutting out the sinew : an appellation, 
as Mr. Finn justly observes, so appropriately 
Jewish (he ought rather to have said Israelitish) 
that no other people than the descendants of Jacob 
could even assign a reason for its origin, if 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 73 

they were to assume the name for any pur- 
pose. 

Among the various signs of the times^ is the 
semi-christian rebellion of the Chinese against the 
intrusive Tartar Dynasty. Possibly it may tend 
to throw some further light upon this remarkable 
colony. 

XIV. Distinct apparently from all the frag- 
ments noticed either by Dr. Buchanan or Mr. 
Pinn^ the senior missionary to the Jews^ Mr. 
Samuel discovered what he supposed to be the 
Two Tribes and a Half on the western shore of 
the Caspian Sea. 

As this locality is not very far distant_, north- 
ward^ from Assyria^ it is not improbable that the 
Two Tribes and a Half, deported by Pul and 
Tiglath-Pileser into Ashur^ may have been sub- 
sequently moved northward; to the western shore 
of the Caspian^ by Shalmaneser^ for the purpose 
of acquiring more room in Ashar^ whither he 
subsequently carried away the remaining Seven 
Tribes and a Half: and this is rendered the more 
likely from the circumstance that some of the 
captive Israelites were planted in the cities of the 
Medes ; which implies that there was still a want 
of room in Ashur. 



74 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ 



Those^ wbom Mr. Samuel found on the western 
shore of the Caspian^ had not been converted to 
Christianity : and they were readily known to be 
Israelites by their continuing to observe the 
usages of the Ceremonial Law. Like the Nesto- 
rians of Assyria and their still unconverted bre- 
thren^ they were shut up in the midst of bar- 
barous tribes : and^ along with them^ they 
occupied the mountainous region of Daghistan^ 
which extends about 134 miles in length and 
between 30 and 40 in breadth. The Lesghies^ 
who are^ however^ bigoted Mohammedans^ affirm 
themselves to be descended from the Tribe of 
Dan : and^ in many respects^ their physiognomy 
and character assimilate to the Hebrew. Curi- 
ously enough^ they acknowledge those who retain 
the Law of Moses to be the original inhabitants 
of the mountains : although they themselves ap- 
pear to be of the same stocky and_, so far as out- 
ward figure goes^ to be descended from common 
parents. 

This discovery of the Ten Tribes, at the present 
important crisis, says Mr. Samuel^ must appear a 
wonderful event. The preservation of them through 
so many ages, in the very heart of their enemies, 
must be acknowledged as a most signal act of Di- 



AND RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES. 75 



vine Providence : and we need no stronger or more 
convincing 'proof of the Time of their Restoration 
being at hand; when they shall he t alien from the 
place of their interment for near two thousand five 
hundred years, and be restored to their own land, to 
share with their brethren of the House of Judah 
the splendour of the Messiah^ s kingdom^-, 

XV. In times like the present^ such discoveries 
are most deeply interesting. Yet is the interest 
of a very avv^ful description. 

If we be drawing near to the Dissolution of the 
Ottoman Power^ and to the subsequent Restoration 
of Israel and Judah^ and thence also to the close 
of the fated 1260 years : we must^ of plain pro- 
phetic necessity^ be also drawing near to that 
unexampled time of trouble, which is universally 
and unanimously foretold^ as synchronising with 
the Return of God^s Ancient People, and as affect- 
ing the final downfall of that baneful Apostatic 
Perversion of Christianity^ which is described as 
making one vigorous effort to recover its usurped 
authority^ ere^ like a millstone^ it sinks irreme- 
diably into the abyss of utter perdition. 

* Remnant Found, p. 107, 108. See also Ibid. p. xii-xiv. 
42-47. 



76 DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN POWER^ ETC. 

May this Protestant Country retrace its steps 
before it be too late : lest it^ partaking as it bas 
fearfully done in the sins of the mystic Babylon, 
should receive also of her destined plagues. May 
it, through God^s undeserved mercy, be preserved 
from a return to, or an encouragement of the de- 
lusive errors, which it renounced in the day of the 
blessed Reformation ! 



London : — Printed by G. Barclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




